


no man is an island (this I know)

by Haeronwen



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Ice Cream, M/M, Snark, partners in crime, shady government conspiracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4494483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haeronwen/pseuds/Haeronwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We're criminals, Arthur.  Our insides are already rotten."</p><p>(Or: Arthur has a proposition. Eames has gelato.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	no man is an island (this I know)

Eames is in San Gimignano enjoying a mountain of coconut gelato when Arthur walks up to his table and orders a cappuccino.  The place is a tiny little tourist trap, which makes both risk and reward considerably greater, and Eames is nothing if not a gambling man.  At any rate, it’s the closest he’s getting to a little R&R, particularly when certain deprecating point men persist in tracking him across the globe and judging his gastronomic choices.

“Darling,” he says, without batting an eye, “it’s thirty degrees.  Would you not prefer a Coke?”

“I’d rather not rot my insides, if it’s all the same to you.”

“We’re criminals, Arthur.  Our insides are already rotten.”

Arthur ignores him.  He’s well practised at it.  He sips his coffee in his three piece suit in the middle of bloody summer and watches with a certain distaste as Eames finishes his ice cream, and then says, “Shall we?” as if they had a prior appointment and Eames has been keeping them both waiting.

Eames loves to keep Arthur waiting.  In this instance, however, his interest has been sufficiently piqued; Arthur isn’t over fond of warmer climes, and that fact that he’s gone to the effort of flying out here suggests business of the pressing kind.  It helps, of course, that Arthur is an excellent person to have at one’s back, and that—barring the narrowly averted Inception debacle—jobs he works with Arthur tend to be a good time.

He knows better than to be surprised when Arthur leads the way back to Eames’s hotel room, wholly unprompted.

“Something’s come up,” Arthur begins, the moment the door closes behind them.  Serious as a heart attack.  “A job.”

“I’d assumed as much.  Who’s the client?”

There’s a pause, and then, “I don’t _know_.”

“Well,” says Eames, “there’s a first time for everything.”

“I know who put out the hit,” Arthur snaps, and gosh if it isn’t a little bit entertaining to see the formerly unflappable _flapped_.  “Name of Prynne, but he’s a smokescreen.  A good one, mind—whoever it is he’s working for I can’t get close.”

“Government?”

“That was my conclusion, yes.”

“Which one?”

“Based on the fact that Prynne and the mark are both English, I’d say yours.”

“Goody,” says Eames.  “I do love a homecoming.”

“You’re assuming we’re taking the job.”

“You wouldn’t be here if we weren’t, poppet.”

Arthur looks at him for a moment, expression inscrutable.  “You’re telling me you’re happy to be on government payroll?”

“We’ve worked for worse than the British government,” Eames points out.

Arthur raises an eyebrow.

“Perhaps not worse,” he concedes.  “As bad as.”

“I don’t like going into anything blind,” Arthur reminds him.

“The fact that you brought this to me anyway suggests the job is particularly lucrative.”

“It is,” Arthur says, reluctantly, “a lot.”

“Enough to make the risk worthwhile?”

Arthur gives him _a look_.  “I had hoped you’d weigh in on that,” he says.

Eames grins, vindicated.  “That means yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> A scene that I wrote in the course of something longer than I couldn't bear to scrap entirely. Title from Ben Howard's 'Black Flies'.


End file.
